Wanted - Eglu Cube Mk1 Roosting Bars

[Charlottechicken]

I've got an old computer to get rid of and have transferred all my old files off it, but am wondering if I should remove the hard drive? OH seems to think not, as he says any banking info or credit card transactions would only be visible to anyone hacking in while I am online, and not stored in the pc.

 

I didn't have any particularly sensitive information stored on the computer, so should it be OK to go out with the hard drive still in it?

[CatieB]

OH works in IT and is shouting at you, take the HD out and smash it with a hammer. Do not dispose of it in tact.

[Charlottechicken]

Thank you! I can always throw the bits on the fire too!

[sjp]

you could keep the old hard drive and see if you can install it in your new PC spare HD's are good for storing photos on

if you don't want it then format it then smash it

[Cinnamon]

Glad you posted this - I have 2 old computers in the loft still

[Willow]

Definitely remove and physically destroy, the rest can be dropped off at the tip and recycled

[Charlottechicken]

Thank you for your replies!

 

you could keep the old hard drive and see if you can install it in your new PC spare HD's are good for storing photos on

if you don't want it then format it then smash it

 

I have bought an external hard drive for storing stuff on, so don't need it. (I take it on holiday and put photos on it to free up camera space!) I am not sure if it is corrupted, as the old pc takes an age to do anything and it has a large capacity (apparently )

 

No idea what formatting is, heard of it but haven't a clue

[majorbloodnock]

It does, of course, depend on how cautious you want to be. However, I have never disposed of any of my old computers - including work ones - with the hard drive still inside.

 

The safest is definitely the percussive school of disposal, and it gives you a good workout too. The only thing you really need to destroy is the stack of disc platters inside the drive, so I prefer to unscrew all the bolts first and take the cover off so I can see exactly what I'm breaking. A hammer is good, but a sledgehammer is better.

 

Please also bear in mind that this applies even more for SSD (solid state disk) drives that are creeping into laptops now. The process by which any formatting of those is done cannot be relied on to do what you think it will, and may well leave your files intact (imagine claiming you've destroyed a library when all you've done is burn the index cards that help you find the books).

[charly1979]

Definately formatt it cant remember offhand how to do that although I do recall formatt c: being typed but you need to be in the command prompt (in my early college years people used to torment the lectuerers by pretending to do this) , We did a whole 90 min lecture on the correct disposal of a hard drive at uni popping it in the freezer shold also kill it . I rekon you should formatt, freeze smash and then dispose of over a number of weeks that way unless someone was stalking your rubbish it should end up sperataed never to be reunited. Might all sound very OTT but after some of the stuff we were told at Uni there are some clever peeps out there capable of all sorts !! Another sure why to destroy it would be to have my 3 yr old Harvey nick named 'The Destroyer' for a few hours

[Geoid]

A hammer is good, but a sledgehammer is better.

 

I use thermite

[The Dogmother]

Yup, deffo destroy it; a friend works in forensic IT for the police and can retrieve all sorts of stuff from apparently cleaned disks. I take my long-handled 7lb hammer to them, then burn it and take the casing/other bits to the recycling centre.

[chuckmum6]

OH roasts ours in a furnace, seems to do the trick!

[Leicester_H]

Yup, deffo destroy it; a friend works in forensic IT for the police and can retrieve all sorts of stuff from apparently cleaned disks.

 

I'm not disagreeing about destroying disc but................ how many people finding a disc on a tip would have the skills, software and time to even bother trying to recover data on the off chance of it being valuable ?

 

H

[Charlottechicken]

Right, I've taken the side off the old pc tower and found something important looking located at the front of the tower. It was clipped in and appears to be cased in metal is about 15 cm x 10 cm and approx 2 cm thick. It has a ribbon lead plugged into it which is marked 'maste'r and 'slave'. Also has a big sticker covering the whole of one side with lots of techy info on and the other side is half printed circuit. It says 'Seagate'. Is this the hard drive?

 

Edited: yes, just googled the part number and it is the hard drive! I'm going to keep it for a while and if I don't need it I will smash it to smithereens!

[Charlottechicken]

............. how many people finding a disc on a tip would have the skills, software and time to even bother trying to recover data on the off chance of it being valuable ?

 

H

 

I would love to know this! Also, what type of data is on there? This is the first computer I have disposed of. Believe it or not it was 10 years old!

[Leicester_H]

Believe it or not it was 10 years old!

I got a new desktop PC last year (a really good one to run my flight sim software and the high resolution scenery is very demanding - I am a private pilot) - my previous one lasted 7 years.

I don't believe in upgrading things (PCs, cars, phones) just for the sake of it. If it works adequately I mostly keep things.

 

H

[stu]

Depending on the age and type of machine, you should canibalise all serviceable parts... hard drive, memory and cards... even the processor and fans (the memory and cards etc could even be ebay-able, and present no security risk at all to sell on). If you want to do good with it... look for a recycling company, and they will use the bits and pieces to help third world development and such.

The only part I would throw away would be the frame of the tower... everything else can usually be used again.

 

Caddy the hard drive (put it in an enclosure) and use it, basically.

It is possible to wipe it effectively by getting a piece of software that just writes random 0s and 1s over it. The Ministry of Defence do this seven times, and the best IT tech I know wouldn't even bother trying to retrieve data from such a wipe.

 

I never throw anything away, but I'm a bloke, and this drives my wife nuts.

[charly1979]

I never throw anything away, but I'm a bloke, and this drives my wife nuts.

 

Stu you would get on fantastically with my Rich !! I seem to have either a computer part shop in every room of my house or computer part grave found another box of what looked like power supplies grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I have about 5 pcs in my bedroom in various states and him saying something like need to do that blah blah blah and then that can go to the tip well he may find it all at the tip if his offshore trip goes ahead at the end of the month Im planning a major chuck out

[majorbloodnock]

OK, some specifics.

 

Firstly, I can't tell you how likely it is that someone finding a hard disc would try to get stuff off it, but do you want to chance it? If you stand to lose a lot, even the smallest chance could be too much to risk, whereas if you're absolutely sure there's nothing personal then perhaps you don't care at all.

 

Secondly, what could be on the disc. Well, just think of the most private piece of information you have stored on the disc. Do you have your online banking password saved in an obscurely named file so you can find it if you forget it? Do you have any family photos on it that you wouldn't want posted on the Internet? Do you keep any of your friends' email addresses, names and phone numbers together? Do you have any spreadsheets with your accounts? Have you ever used a web site for anything financial (where the browsing session information may still be stored on your PC somewhere)? Perhaps scariest, does the hard disc contain enough information about family and friends to allow someone to pose as someone you trust long enough to get you or someone you know to do something incautious? If the answer to any of these is yes, assume your hard disc is worth something to a criminal, and is therefore worth your time wiping and/or destroying.

 

Thirdly, software for overwriting the disc with zeros. This is the best means of wiping the disc without physically damaging it, since it's still perfectly readable, but what can now be read from it is entirely valueless. HOWEVER, for technical reasons, you can only rely on this actually happening if the hard disc is a mechanical one (one with platters inside that spin). SDDs (solid state drives) may well use smoke and mirrors to report they've done lots of overwriting, whilst in fact leaving the files in a recoverable state.

 

Realistically, you can go to a lot of effort to try to get rid of your personal data from an old hard drive, but ten minutes with a sledgehammer is generally easier and much more effective.

[The Dogmother]

Realistically, you can go to a lot of effort to try to get rid of your personal data from an old hard drive, but ten minutes with a sledgehammer is generally easier and much more effective.

 

Too right; my friend wipes them then applies 'dynamics engineering' to obliterate it. It's amazing what he's found on supposedly wiped disks in the course of his work.

[stu]

Starting to get a little paranoid here aren't we..?

You really think people with the capability to revive your PC information are interested in you..?

 

Just seems a shame to smash a perfectly good piece of usable equipment, and given the fact that most of your information is lying on a server somewhere, even if you don't have a PC at all.

[majorbloodnock]

Starting to get a little paranoid here aren't we..?

No. Paranoia assumes someone's out to get you. What I'm advocating here is to assume the odds are low, but the cost to you if it does go wrong is high. Similarly, the chances of you causing a plane crash if you use your mobile phone during takeoff are really low, but the consequences if it did happen are huge, so people take it seriously. That's not paranoia; that's caution.

 

You really think people with the capability to revive your PC information are interested in you..?

I hugely doubt anyone is concerned enough about me personally to try targeting me. However, imagine a group of bad guys who get a steady stream of hard discs, memory sticks, SD cards, CDs, DVDs and so on, and scan each disc to see if there's anything they can exploit. How likely is this? Well given even back in 2006 an unwiped hard drive was worth about 50 US dollars on the black market, I'll let you decide. If they can scan enough discs, sooner or later they'll find something worth exploiting, and exploiting expensively enough to make a good profit.

 

Update - just after writing this, I found this article. 2011 prices reckon up to 200 dollars for a hard disc with data intact.

 

Just seems a shame to smash a perfectly good piece of usable equipment, and given the fact that most of your information is lying on a server somewhere, even if you don't have a PC at all.

If you want to use it, fine. Your suggestion about putting the disc in a caddy and using it as an external drive is a good one, so long as you want to make the investment. However, you can buy huge amounts of storage for a pittance these days, and a caddy to resurrect the hard drive from a 10 year old PC will cost significantly more than buying a brand new SD card with many times more space. A shame it may be, but the economics will be the deciding factor for many.

[stu]

Average cost of a 3.5" caddy... €10.

average cost of a new 120GB drive... €30... but regardless... why not mount it back in the new machine for free?

 

All i am saying is that if you sanitise the drive, it is perfectly safe to use, and on the plus side, depending on what you work on (music, images etc) it is always a good idea not to be working and storing on the same physical drive anyway.

 

Just clean it and mount it.

Have a look at this site... all these are free, and whilst some cleaning may take hours and hours, it might be worth it, if the drive is large enough to think about keeping..?

Clickety-Click..!!

 

but also... the most common way for people to get drives is not by finding them but by stealing them from your home. They ewill always get an unsecured drive in this instance... your active one.

 

Incidentally.. I have in my home an old hard drive from a health service computer, which is only 40MB... it's ridiculous really, but that's how far we have come. It can't be used because a modern OS can't even write a signature to it... lol

[majorbloodnock]

I think perhaps we're getting a bit bogged down by detail, so probably best to summarise.

 

If you have an old PC you want to get rid of, it's a good candidate for recycling. The exception to this is the hard disc, since that's the only part containing anything sensitive.

 

At that point, you have a decision to make as to what to do with the hard drive, and you have two basic choices:

• Reuse it in conjunction with your other computer(s).
  
• Dispose of it.

 

Both choices are perfectly valid. If you choose to reuse it, this is obviously the most environmentally friendly, although you may need (or need to get hold of) a wee bit of IT nous to do this. If you choose to dispose of it, you are strongly advised to make sure the data you used to have stored on it cannot be read. You can achieve this in several ways, but the most pragmatic combination of simplicity, effectiveness and lack of cost is to break it irreparably.

[stu]

Agreed.

I change my vote to sledgehammer..!!